Sony: We had ‘no playbook’ for hack attack

Sony Pictures has revealed it was largely unprepared for the hacking attack that took place last year.

Michael Lynton, the chief executive of the firm, spoke to the Associated Press, describing the firm as being a ‘canary in the coal mine’.

“There’s no playbook for this,” said Lynton, “so you are in essence trying to look at the situation as it unfolds and make decisions without being able to refer to a lot of experiences you’ve had in the past or other people’s experiences.”

He added: “You’re on completely new ground.”

According to the Sony Pictures top brass, the company had to scramble to restore internal communications.

This meant tracking down old phones and paying staff with paper cheques as opposed to digitally orchestrated bank transfers.

Lynton then talked up the scale of the hack, explaining how Sony Pictures experienced significant data loss.

“They came in the house, stole everything, then burned down the house,” Lynton revealed.

“They destroyed servers, computers, wiped them clean of all the data and took all the data.”

The exec remained insistent that Sony Pictures was ‘adequately prepared’, but could never have predicted ‘an attack of this nature’ – an attack he thinks all other companies would’ve failed to withstand too.

Hackers leaked all manner of confidential data from Sony Pictures when the attack took place late last year, including movie scripts, email transcripts, employee information, and movie files.

The attackers, outed as working on behalf of North Korea by the FBI, also forced Sony to cancel its Christmas day screening of The Interview, a comedy movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco as journalists conscripted by the CIA to kill North Korea’s leader.

The movie has now been released as a digital download, and has broken records as the highest grossing movie ever released exclusively online.